Brazil wants Iran sanctions dropped
Press TV – May 19, 2010
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim
After Iran issued a declaration seeking to end the country’s nuclear dispute, Brazil says slapping a new round of UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran would jeopardize a peaceful solution to case.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, whose country is a non-permanent member at the UNSC, warned against the approval of any draft resolution on Iran, saying the move would provoke a chain of reactions.
Referring to the fact that the newly-issued nuclear declaration would usher in a new era of talks on Iran’s nuclear activities, Amorim said that ignoring the statement would result in failure of all efforts aimed at achieving a peaceful solution.
“I think that ignoring this agreement would be despising a peaceful solution, so I believe there is no way of doing so,” Amorim said.
He added that the best way to guarantee a halt to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear standoff was to implement the nuclear declaration.
The remarks came as the US announced on Tuesday that an agreement was made among all veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council on a draft sanctions resolution against Iran.
Meanwhile, Brazilian ambassador to the UN Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti told Brazil’s Globo News television that she would not take part in UNSC talks on the new draft resolution against Iran.
Assad: Peres Offered Us ‘Golan for Iran and Resistance Movements’
Al-Manar TV – 18/05/2010
Syrian President Bashar Assad says his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, relayed a message from Israeli President Shimon Peres last week that the Zionist entity was willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for Syria cutting its ties with Iran and the “resistance movements”.
Assad made the remark in an interview published Tuesday in Lebanese daily as-Safir.
Last week, Peres took part in ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in Moscow. He asked Medvedev to relay a message to Assad, with whom the Russian leader met two days later.
On the backdrop of the recent tensions and the calming messages, Assad replied: “Our answer is clear. Reality proves that Israel is not working for peace, so talks will not help.”
Peres told Medvedev, “We are reaching our hand out for peace with Syria, but peace cannot exist without a basic condition: You cannot reach a hand out for peace while continuing to support terror groups.”
He explained that “Israel has no other interpretation for the transfer of arms from Syria to Hezbollah. The transfer of long-range, precise missiles to the organization is an incitement to war.”
Assad was asked in the interview whether Syria would join a war in the event of an Israeli attack on Lebanon.
“I believe that the Israelis hope to hear the answer to this question, but I won’t fulfill their wish,” the Syrian president replied. “These are military matters which we shall not reveal. We shall not reveal our cards or plans.”
He also addressed claims that his country transferred Scud missiles to Hezbollah. “All the public sights of war and peace are imaginary. I say we must worry if the Israelis are silent, not if they talk. The threats you hear and the Scud missiles they talk about have nothing to do with the conditions of war and the possibility that it will take place, just like all the calm attempts which follow do not mean that the chances of peace have grown stronger.”
“We don’t believe the Israelis,” Assad added. “We act based on the assumption that we must be prepared for war and peace at any minute. There are those who made a mistake and erased the resistance option, becoming hostage to the peace option. We must be prepared for both options at the same time.”
The Israeli president’s associates said that a situation in which the Syrians have the Golan but continue to maintain relations with Iran is inconceivable.
A force more powerful
Ewa Jasiewicz, The Electronic Intifada, 17 May 2010
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The MV Rachel Corrie will carry tons of cement and other materials to Gaza. (Free Gaza) |
Later this month, ships from all over the world will converge in the Mediterranean and set sail for the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. This international coalition is called the Freedom Flotilla.
The Free Gaza Movement has sailed eight missions to Gaza in the past three years, five of them successful. The last three were violently stopped by the Israeli Navy; the boat Dignity was rammed three times and the Spirit of Humanity turned back in January 2009, then seized and all aboard arrested.
This time the Freedom Flotilla is upping the ante and instead of one- and two-vessel challenges, will be breaking Israel’s siege with an eight-boat front.
In the past, the Israel Navy could pick us off as individual boats. Now [our challenge is more substantial], including Free Gaza’s four ships, 700 passengers and some 5,000 tons of reconstruction materials and medical equipment. This includes Free Gaza’s MV Rachel Corrie, which was purchased through generous donations from Malaysia’s Perdana Global Peace Foundation.
The Israeli government has responded to the “sea intifada” coming its way with saber rattling and accusations of serving Hamas. Israel has proscribed the Turkish human rights and relief group Insani Vardim Vakafi (IHH). IHH is responsible for sending a cargo ship and passenger ship in the Freedom Flotilla. Israel has accused it and Free Gaza of “supporting terrorism.” Half the Israeli navy is set to challenge the mission, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the helm commanding the operation in person. The air force is on standby and “diplomatic pressure” is being applied behind the scenes. The message is clear from Israel: “We will stop you and we will use force to stop you.”
At no point does the Freedom Flotilla enter Israeli territorial waters. The journey starts in local European or Turkish waters, courses through international waters and ends in Gaza’s territorial waters. No checkpoints interrupt us. No walls daunt our sight. We’ve proven that it’s possible to sail a clear line with no borders, as we want the world to be, until we get to Gaza.
Free Gaza is best described as a tactic but in practice, a tactic within a score of tactics active in the global solidarity movement. But it is an expensive one — and many have criticized the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent on the missions for boats and finding boats, flagging, registration, legal costs, management costs, port fees, crew pay, mooring fees, repairs, renovation, GPS, warehouses for cargo, crane and forklift hire. Collectively the cost of the Flotilla runs literally into the millions of euros. Some ask: “Isn’t that money better spent on ‘aid’?”
Every Palestinian family we met in Gaza, particularly after Israel’s invasion last winter kept saying to us: “We don’t want aid, we need a political solution; we need our rights. Our issue cannot be reduced or swapped into bags of flour or food parcels. Palestine is not a humanitarian issue — it is a political one.” This reality, of the need for justice, tests the aid industry in Palestine, and the false “objectivity” and lack of political will in the face of human suffering with the claim: “We don’t take sides. We want to continue to keep giving our humanitarian aid.”
Well, we do take sides — that of direct democracy over occupation and apartheid.
This flotilla is an interruption to a discourse of power that says — governments know best, leave it to us to negotiate new “freedoms” and realities; a continuation of not even top-down but top-to-top processes of keeping power out of the hands of ordinary people. Leaders fly from continent to continent, round table discussions go round and round, elephants in the room stamp their feet and roar ignored. This flotilla puts that power back into our hands — to interrupt this ongoing Nakba.
We will not stop. From 1948 until now, history keeps repeating itself, colonies keep expanding, corporations keep reaping the rewards of reproducing repression; daily dispossession and casual killing is normalized, and alienation from the consequences of our work and actions keeps us compartmentalized. The occupation is reproduced on a daily basis in factories, classrooms, courtrooms, cinemas, art galleries, supermarkets and holiday resorts. Radical refusal, radical transgressions can make change happen. Refusing to be alienated from our brothers and sisters and recognizing our community is the essence of solidarity.
This flotilla represents radical solidarity and a force that can be realized when people from all over the world act on their conscience. It’s a force made real through stepping out onto the streets or into occupation-supporting businesses, through speaking out, through fundraising in mosques, churches, synagogues, schools; through writing, singing, sharing, relaying and promoting, and packing and driving boxes of materials and cement, and cheering on and praying for and protesting any attack.
Israel may well succeed in stopping us — but this is an unknown and there is power in that. We can affect that which hasn’t happened yet.
When Rachel Corrie stood in front of the bulldozer driver that killed her, she acted on radical trust — that the soldier would see her humanity. She lost, because the soldier had lost his humanity. Yet Rachel’s faith abides in each of us. Because if our oppressors are losing their humanity then we must never stop showing them that we have it. We are undertaking this mission in the spirit of those who have fought and sacrificed their lives for our collective humanity, and to remind everyone who can see of the need to act on it.
Ewa Jasiewicz is a coordinator with the Free Gaza Movement (http://www.freegaza.org/).
Arab League hails Iran nuclear declaration
Press TV – May 17, 2010
Arab League (AL) Secretary General Amr Moussa has praised Iran’s nuclear declaration as a positive step towards dispelling Western fears over its nuclear program.
Iran announced a nuclear declaration on Monday following trilateral talks with non-permanent UN Security Council members Turkey and Brazil — under which Iran agrees to swap its low-enriched uranium for reactor fuel in Turkey.
Moussa said he hoped the move would “solve the current problem regarding the Iranian nuclear file,” DPA reported. The AL chief also hailed efforts by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a fierce advocate of diplomacy in ending the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program.
While Moussa and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US Admiral James Stavridis, have welcomed the declaration, the European Union and Israel expressed skepticism and cast doubt on whether Iran’s latest concession would answer all concerns.
Both Brasilia and Ankara have opposed US-led efforts to slap tougher UN sanctions on Tehran over Western accusations that the Islamic Republic is harboring a covert nuclear weapons program.
Iran has denied the charges, insisting that its nuclear program is aimed at civilian purposes such as electricity generation and medical research. The nuclear declaration is the latest step in convincing Western powers that the country’s nuclear program is peaceful.
As a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Tehran stresses its civilian nuclear program is within a legal framework.
Ahmadinejad welcomes Lula da Silva
Press TV – May 16, 2010
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has officially welcomed his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the capital of Tehran ahead of the G15 summit.
President Lula arrived in Tehran, accompanied by a 300-member delegation — including five Brazilian cabinet ministers — to attend the Group of 15 summit on Monday.
The Brazilian president is expected to meet with the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei during his visit.
According to IRNA, Brazilian and Iranian officials signed eleven memorandums of understanding on Sunday to promote bilateral cooperation in the fields of economy, agriculture, and industry.
Brazil, a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, has been making efforts to break the deadlock over Iran’s nuclear program and help reach an agreement on a fuel swap deal.
The G15 is made up of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America with a common goal of economic growth.
Earlier on Saturday, foreign ministers from the group of 15 met to discuss measures to tackle the global economic crisis.
Israel’s Intimidation Tactics Won’t Stop Us: First Ship Sets Sail for Gaza!
By Huwaida Arraf – 14 May 2010
At 22:45 local time tonight, the MV Rachel Corrie, a 1200-ton cargo ship, part of the eight-vessel Freedom Flotilla, set sail from Ireland on its way to the Mediterranean Sea. Three, ships from Turkey and Greece will join her, then sail to Gaza.
This past week reports from Israel have indicated that the Israeli authorities will not allow the Freedom Flotilla to reach Gaza with its cargo of much-needed reconstruction material, medical equipment, and school supplies. According to Israeli news sources, clear orders have been issued to prevent the ships from reaching Gaza, even if this necessitates military violence.
The Free Gaza Movement, which has launched eight other sea missions to Gaza, confirms that Israel has tried these kinds of threats and intimidation tactics before in order to try to stop the missions before they start. “They have not deterred us before and will not deter us now,” said one of the organizers.
Ship to Gaza — Sweden, a Freedom Flotilla coalition partner, together with parliamentarian Mehmet Kaplan (Green Party) yesterday asked for an audience with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, Carl Bildt, to discuss what measures the Swedish government and the European Union will take to protect the Freedom Flotilla’s peaceful, humanitarian voyage. Earlier this week during a meeting with the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza – another coalition partner, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyib Erdogan expressed his support for “breaking the oppressive siege on the Gaza Strip…which is at the top of Turkey’s list of priorities.“
Coalition partners, Ship to Gaza – Greece and the Turkish relief organization IHH, stressed that the ships, passengers, and cargo will be checked at each port of departure, making it clear that we constitute no security threat to Israel.
Israel’s threats to attack unarmed civilians aboard vessels carrying reconstruction aid are outrageous and indicative of the cruel and violent nature of Israel’s policies towards Gaza. The Freedom Flotilla is acting in line with universal principals of human rights and justice in defying a blockade identified as illegal by the UN and other humanitarian organizations. Palestinians in Gaza have a right to the thousands of basic supplies that Israel bans from entering, including cement and schoolbooks, as well as a right to access the outside world. The Freedom Flotilla coalition calls on all signatories to the Fourth Geneva Conventions to pressure Israel to adhere to its obligations under international humanitarian law, to end the lethal blockade on Gaza, and to refrain from attacking this peaceful convoy.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is comprised of: Free Gaza Movement (FG), European Campaign to End the Siege of Gaza (ECESG), Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), Ship to Gaza Greece, Ship to Gaza Sweden, and the International Committee to Lift the Siege on Gaza, with hundreds of groups and organizations around the world supporting the effort.
Huwaida Arraf is co-founder and director of Free Gaza Movement.
www.freegaza.org www.savegaza.eu www.ihh.org.tr
www.shiptogaza.gr www.shiptogaza.se
Israel’s red line: Shin Bet arrests boycott leader
By Jonathan Cook | May 14, 2010
Amir Makhoul is leading an emerging movement inside Israel
The recent arrest of two respected public figures from Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority in night-time raids on their homes by the Shin Bet secret police – brought to light this week when a gag order was partially lifted – sent shock waves through the community.
The arrests were not the first of their kind. The Shin Bet has been hounding and imprisoning politicians and intellectuals from the country’s Palestinian minority, a fifth of the population, since the birth of the Jewish state more than six decades ago. Currently, two MKs from Arab political parties, as well as the leader of the popular Islamic Movement, are facing trials.
But the detention of Amir Makhoul and Omar Sayid by Israeli intelligence forces has been seen differently – as the gathering storm clouds in a political climate already fiercely hostile to its Palestinian citizens.
Mohammed Zeidan, the head of the Human Rights Association in Nazareth, said: “We are used to our political leaders being persecuted but now the Shin Bet is turning its sights on the leaders of Palestinian civil society in Israel, and that’s a dangerous development.”
Makhoul and Sayid were not accused of the usual public order offenses, nor had they simply violated chauvinistic legislation that criminalizes Palestinian citizens’ visits to neighboring Arab states. Both are facing the much more serious charge of espionage, on behalf of Lebanon’s Hizbullah.
Makhoul, who appears to be the chief object of the Shin Bet’s interest, is the head of Ittijah, an umbrella organization coordinating the activities of Palestinian human rights groups in Israel. More specifically, he has become the leading voice inside Israel backing the growing international campaign for boycott, sanctions and divestment against Israel.
On Wednesday, the courts approved an extension of Makhoul’s remand. He was not allowed to be present and was denied the right to a lawyer until at least next Monday, 12 days since his arrest. He is reportedly being interrogated around the clock.
Sayid, an activist with the Tajamu political party and a scientist who specialises in developing new medicines from Middle Eastern plants, has been held by the Shin Bet since 24 April.
Amnesty International threatened to declare Makhoul a “prisoner of conscience,” saying his arrest “smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work.”
Observers from the Palestinian minority too have ridiculed the allegations, based on secret evidence, that the pair made “contact with a foreign agent.” They point out that under the draconian emergency regulations being used in this case the Shin Bet needs only the flimsiest circumstantial evidence to lay such a charge.
Zeidan called it an easy, “one size fits all” security offense that was difficult to challenge but persuasive to the Jewish majority. “You only need unwittingly to meet at a conference a relative of a relative of someone in Hizbullah and the Shin Bet thinks it has grounds to arrest you.”
The Palestinian minority is not alone in believing that Makhoul and Sayid have not spied in the accepted sense of passing classified or sensitive information to an enemy: Israel’s military correspondents have been largely dismissive of the espionage charges too. In the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, writers Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff pointed out that neither Palestinian citizen is privy to secrets that would interest Hizbullah.
Instead, the correspondents hinted at other motives behind the arrests. Any contacts between Israel’s enemies such as Hizbullah and Palestinian rights activists in Israel are a threat, they surmise, because Palestinian leaders in Israel might offer assistance in “co-ordinating political positions” or initiate “protests and riots during sensitive periods.” That radically expands the traditional definition of “espionage”.
The Shin Bet’s pursuit of Makhoul and Sayid, in the view of community leaders, needs to be understood in terms of a fixed assumption by the Israeli establishment that the Arab minority poses a political threat to the continued survival of a Jewish state.
The roots of this worldview can be traced back to the signing of the Oslo accords. With the launch of a peace process with the Palestinians, Israeli politicians began to reconsider the status of the large Palestinian minority. Many believed that allowing a significant population of Palestinians to remain inside Israel as citizens after the creation of a neighboring Palestinian state might one day prove to be the country’s Achilles’ heel.
Might not the Palestinian minority provide the Palestinians in the occupied territories with a “foot in the door” to try to win back the whole of historic Palestine rather than settle for a mini-state in the West Bank and Gaza?
Those fears escalated dramatically when Oslo turned sour and the second intifada erupted in 2000. Israel believed the Palestinians had refused its “generous” offer at Camp David in the hope that they could use the Palestinian minority as a “Trojan horse” to destroy the Jewish state demographically from within.
Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time, called the Palestinian minority the “spear point” of what he believed was Yasser Arafat’s attempt to dismantle Israel as a Jewish state. He feared that a political reform program demanding a “state of all its citizens”, which had become a rallying cry for Palestinian citizens, was really intended to bring the return of millions of Palestinian refugees under cover of an equal rights struggle.
Israel responded by making contact all but impossible between Palestinians in Israel and those in the occupied territories, including by building a wall around the West Bank and legislating an effective ban on marriages across the Green Line.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Shin Bet’s chief target prior to the latest arrests was Azmi Bishara, the architect of the “state of all its citizens” campaign. In 2007 Bishara was accused of spying for Hizbullah too, and has been in exile ever since.
At that time, Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, warned that he regarded it as his job to “thwart” any activities, including political ones, that threatened Israel’s survival as a Jewish state.
According to Zeidan and other analysts, the Shin Bet’s hand in the latest arrests appears to be guided by a similar assessment that the Palestinian minority is again posing an “existential threat” to Israel – even if for different reasons.
Makhoul is seen as the figurehead of an emerging movement inside Israel that, faced with the refusal of Israelis to countenance political reforms to democratize the country, is devising new political strategies.
He has not hidden the extensive contacts he has developed both among western Palestinian solidarity activists and in the Arab world, urging the need for a boycott of Israel. He was also at the forefront of the protests inside Israel against its attack on Gaza last year. He was called in for interrogation by the Shin Bet at the time.
“The occupation isn’t news anymore,” Zeidan said. “The big threats facing Israel, in the Shin Bet’s view, are its deteriorating image in terms of human rights and the growing sense abroad that it is an apartheid state.
“Palestinian civil society in Israel, more so even than our political parties, is best placed to make the case on those issues to the international community, to expose the racism and discrimination inherent in a Jewish state. Amir Makhoul’s arrest should be understood in that light.
“The Shin Bet believes we have crossed a red line in our international advocacy.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jkcook.net.
Erdogan: We are working together with other countries to break Gaza siege
Palestine Information Center – 12/05/2010
ISTANBUL — Turkish premier Recep Erdogan said that his country is working alongside other countries to break the Israeli unjust siege on the Gaza Strip and to rebuild what was destroyed during the war. This came during his meeting on Monday in Istanbul with a delegation representing a number of European civil organizations including the European campaign to end the siege and the Palestinian return center. Erdogan stressed that breaking the blockade on Gaza is a priority for him and Turkey and that he is working with other countries to end it. The delegation discussed with the premier the avenues to end the siege and the importance of the Turkish role in the region.
The two parties also talked about Israel’s new membership in the organization for economic cooperation and development and the need to oblige Israel to lift its blockade on Gaza and respect human rights as a precondition for accession into any international body.
Director of the Palestinian return center Majid Al-Zeer criticized the international community for rewarding Israel for committing massacres and crimes against humanity with allowing it to join international organizations without having to meet the minimum human rights commitments. Zeer also called for more European parliamentary efforts to isolate Israel internationally until it ends its unjust siege on Gaza and stop all its crimes against Palestinians, asserting that any attempt to strengthen the position of Israel internationally would encourage it to commit more crimes and violations.
In the same context, MP Jamal Al-Khudari, the head of the popular committee against the siege, hailed the Turkish premier for his strenuous efforts to break the blockade on Gaza and alleviate the suffering of its people. Khudari said in a press release on Tuesday that Turkey has always adopted admirable positions toward the Palestinian people, especially its ongoing effort to end the blockade and support poor families, graduates, and the unemployed. The lawmaker denounced Israel for arresting Turkish human rights activists who provide humanitarian services for the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Under the coordination of the Free Gaza Movement, numerous human rights organizations, including the Turkish relief foundation (IHH), the Perdana global peace organization from Malaysia, the European campaign to end the siege, and European institutions will send later this month three cargo ships loaded with reconstruction, medical and educational supplies. At least five passenger boats with over 600 people on board will accompany the cargo ships. These passengers include members of parliament from around the world, UN officials, human rights and trade union activists, as well as journalists who will document the largest coordinated effort aimed to confront Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza.
Threats against flotilla show weakness, activist says
Ma’an – 09/05/2010
Gaza – Israeli threats to open fire at a host of solidarity boats carrying aid to Gaza later this month reveal Israel’s weakness, said Jamal Al-Khudari, head of Gaza’s Popular Committee Against the Siege on Sunday.
“Such threats reflect the occupation’s failure and embody state terrorism against peaceful individuals who come to support a people under siege and aggression,” a statement issued by Al-Khudari said.
Under international law, the activists attempting to dock in Gaza have the right to participate in breaking the siege, Al-Khudari added, saying the threats will not deter participants from arriving in Gaza.
The popular committee organizer said the group was coming well-equipped, and would be ready should the Israeli navy surround them for a long period of time.
The Freedom Flotilla announced plans in late April, saying a group of ships would depart from several corners of the Mediterranean and gather in international waters with the intent to deliver some 5,000 tons of building and medical supplies to the population under siege.
According to flotilla organizers, 600 activists will sail three cargo ships and five passenger boats for Gaza in what a statement called the “biggest internationally coordinated effort to directly challenge Israeli’s ongoing occupation, aggression, and violence against the Palestinian people.”
Defying appeal from Gaza students, Atwood set to accept Israeli prize
By Kristin Srzemski, The Electronic Intifada, 8 May 2010
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| Author Margaret Atwood |
On Sunday, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood will accept the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University and her portion of the $1 million payout that goes with it. Meanwhile, a mere 40 miles away, students in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip will stilll be struggling to find the ways and means to continue their educations.
Atwood will be accepting her prize despite a worldwide call — initiated by the Palestinian Students Campaign for a Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (PSACBI) — for her to turn down the award. The Canadian author, whose work often reflects issues of colonization, feminism, structures of political power and oppression, will be sharing the literary prize with Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, whose novels question the brutalities of colonial rule and post-colonial dispossession. Ghosh was also asked to turn down the prize, which he has declined to do.
Being an artist of conscience has been one of Atwood’s hallmark characteristics throughout her career. She supported the South African anti-Apartheid movement and, according to filmmaker John Greyson, was the first public figure to speak out in support of gay rights after police arrested 300 men in Toronto in 1981. The late Palestinian scholar Edward Said named her as an “oppositional intellectual.” That’s why her acceptance of the Dan David Prize is fraught with ironies, not least of which is the requirement that she donate 10 percent of the prize money back to support graduate students at Tel Aviv University, while Gaza’s students — just a short drive away — are enclosed in an open-air prison, unable to complete their studies.
“We have no fuel supply in Gaza for student transportation,” Ayah Abubasheer of PSCABI wrote in an email on 21 April. “There are no basic supplies or stationery for students in Gaza. Basic materials such as pens, pencils, sharpeners, erasers and so on are not available. And, books? There are no books, research resources or any of the like in Gaza. Israel bombed the Islamic University’s labs and student residences during the [winter 2008-09 attacks on Gaza].”
PSCABI is the student arm of the Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel. Both groups belong to the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, started in Palestine in 2005. The group is comprised of students representing all Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and has alliances with Palestinian student groups at Israeli universities, Abubasheer said. This coalition of activists wrote an open letter to Atwood on 4 April, asking her to turn down the prize. The letter went “viral” and was soon posted on websites and blogs across the Internet. It also spawned other letters and action alerts, all with the aim of persuading Atwood to stand in solidarity with Gaza’s students.
Atwood admitted via email she was aware of the open letter, but said she did not receive it personally. She did not respond to the students in Gaza, but she did reply to Antoine Raffoul, a Palestinian architect living in London who is the founder of the organization 1948: Lest We Forget.
Cultural boycotts equal censorship, Atwood said. In addition, the Dan David Prize is a cultural event, funded by an individual, she said. “To boycott a discussion of literature such as the one proposed would be to take the view that literature is always and only some kind of tool of the nation that produces it — a view I strongly reject.”
Atwood also said via email that she is the international vice president of the literary organization PEN, which advocates for writers who are persecuted or imprisoned because of their work. As such, she is not allowed to participate in cultural boycotts, she said.
Dan David and Tel Aviv University
Dan David, 80, was born and raised in communist Romania. He joined the Zionist youth movement and helped organize aliyah or Zionist emigration to Israel, according to a 13 November 2007 article published by the Israeli daily Haaretz. David, who made his fortune in instant photo booths, used $100 million of his own money to found the Dan David Foundation, which administers the Dan David Prize. He also sits on the Board of Governors of Tel Aviv University (TAU), which is at the center of Israel’s military-industrial complex.
Today, some 64 research projects in defense or national security are being funded by Israeli and US defense agencies on the TAU campus. “TAU is playing a major role in enhancing Israel’s security capabilities and military edge,” reads the introduction to an article entitled “Lifting the Veil of Secrecy” in the Tel Aviv University Review, Winter 2008/09 issue.
“‘People are just not aware of how important university research is in general, and how much TAU contributes to Israel’s security in particular,’ says TAU President Zvi Galil in the article.
One project currently underway explores how to turn birds into weapons because they are relatively “unobtrusive,” especially when compared to the much larger unmanned drones, according to the article.
Antoine Raffoul said that the Dan David Prize cannot be divorced from Israel. “Its institutions, whether cultural, educational, industrial, scientific, judicial, agricultural or military, are part and parcel of the political institution of the state … working hand in hand to enforce the policies of an illegal occupation of Palestinian land,” he said.
TAU was built upon the remains of a Palestinian village depopulated and destroyed by Zionist forces in 1948. “By accepting the prize at Tel Aviv University, you will be indirectly giving a slight and inadvertent nod to Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This university has refused to commemorate the destroyed Palestinian village on which it was built. That village is called Sheikh Muwanis, and it no longer exists as a result of Israel’s confiscation. Its people have been expelled,” the Gaza students wrote in their open letter.
Upholding the rights and voices of the persecuted
During an acceptance speech for the American PEN Literary Service Award in New York City in April, Atwood said oppressors share a commonality. “They wish to silence the human voice, or all human voices that do not sing their songs. They wish to indulge their sense of power, which is best done by grinding underfoot those who cannot retaliate.”
Gaza’s students are disappointed with Atwood’s decision to accept the Dan David Prize, Abubasheer said. “We are deeply wounded by her decision. Students here have been asking about the sincerity of her novels and wonder whether she will reconsider her decision to stand on the wrong side of history”
In the end, for Atwood, at least, it comes down to whether or not a cultural boycott is equivalent to censorship. But as filmmaker Cathy Gulkin said in an article posted on the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s website on 6 May, the two issues are distinct. Gulkin said that censorship is wielded by a force with the power to prevent a work from being presented, while a boycott asks artists to withdraw their work voluntarily. She participated in a boycott of the Tel Aviv International Film Festival last winter.
“Palestinian civil society has no power or will to silence or censor. They can only appeal to people of conscience … to support them in their struggle to achieve their human rights,” Gulkin wrote in her call to boycott last winter.
The Palestinian students and Raffoul point to a number of artists and authors, including Naomi Klein, Carlos Santana, Bono, Snoop Dog and Sting, who have heeded Palestinian civil society’s call for the boycott of Israel.
Raffoul even pointed to actor Marlon Brando, who rejected his Academy Award in 1973 to protest the US government’s treatment of Native Americans or the Beatles rejecting knighthoods in England.
“I sympathize with the very bad conditions the people of Gaza are living through due to the blockade, the military actions, and the Egyptian and Israeli walls,” Atwood wrote in her email to Raffoul.
“We are not asking for sympathy!” Abubasheer said. “We want solidarity. … You are either with justice or with injustice. There is no neutral zone.”
Abubasheer added: “Thus, we all have an individual moral responsibility to boycott. Boycott is inclusive and it brings people together, fighting for peace through justice and accountability, from the youngest to the oldest, from the four quarters of the world, anyone can boycott. After the wiping out of entire families in broad daylight, what else do some public intellectuals need to see in order to make a bold move?”
Raffoul contends that today no one — especially important cultural figures such as Atwood — can exist in a vacuum. “You can’t hide behind the cloak of literature,” he said. “We don’t live in a shell anymore. You cannot claim to be a humanitarian in any state and then … fly into a zone called Israel [that is] killing people and dehumanizing innocent people.”
Atwood said she plans to “observe” what she sees in Palestine and then write about it. She suggested this reporter hold off on writing this article until then.
But Abubasheer would not be comforted by this promise. Quoting Archbishop Desmond Tutu, she said: “If you choose to be neutral in situations of injustice, then you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
She added: “The position taken by Ms. Atwood … is clear in the light of this statement.”
Kristin Szremski is an award-winning journalist with more than 20 years in newspapers. She began her career in Warsaw, Poland, working on an English-language newspaper with members of the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) union. Her work has appeared nationally and internationally. Szremski is currently a freelance journalist living outside Chicago.
Palestinian Students to begin Higher Studies in Venezuela
ABN (Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias) – May 6, 2010
As the consequence of actions by the Venezuelan Embassy in Cairo and the Egyptian Foreign Office, a group of young Palestinians have left Gaza and will be arriving in Venezuela in the next few days. They will study within the International Students Program, coordinated by the Ministry of University Education and the Gran Mariscal de Ayacuyo Foundation.
The Bolivian Ambassador in Cairo, Víctor Carazo, accompanied by the Consul, Cesar Mejías, received the group of Palestinian students in the Egyptian capital after they had travelled through the Rafah crossing, stated a press release at the Foreign Office.
Carazo stressed the fact that these actions are part of the guiding principles of Venezuela’s Foreign Policy based on peace and solidarity as well as in support of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights.
Ambassador Carazo wished the Palestinian students success at the beginning of their career in Venezuela and repeated that Venezuela would support this type of action in order to contribute to reducing the isolation of the population and the Gaza strip imposed by the Israeli authorities.
At the beginning of 2009, the Venezuelan embassy in Cairo, on behalf of the Venezuelan government and people, proved its support of the Palestinian people by sending two cargo ships with humanitarian help destined for victims of the Gaza strip bombings.
This group will join 12 other Palestinian students from the West Bank (occupied Palestinian territories) who are already living in Venezuela and awaiting the beginning of their Medical studies.
(Translated from the Spanish by Sott)
New Israeli ambassador jeered in New Zealand
DPA | May 7, 2010
Wellington – Israel’s first ambassador in New Zealand for eight years was jeered by a group of pro-Palestinian supporters when he arrived to present his credentials at Government House on Friday.
Shemi Tzur is the first resident ambassador in Wellington since 2002 when Israel withdrew its envoy because of financial restraints, leaving relations in the hands of its senior diplomat in Australia.
The Wellington Palestine Group, which accuses Israel of crimes against the Palestinians, protested when Tzur arrived to present his credentials to Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand.
Tzur said his arrival marked a new era in relations between the two countries.
New Zealand froze diplomatic relations in 2004 when two Israelis were jailed for obtaining false New Zealand passports.
Israel’s then-foreign minister Silvan Shalom formally apologized for the men’s activities in 2005, a move then-prime minister Helen Clark said was tacit recognition they were spies.
Israel did not confirm that the pair were members of its Mossad secret service.
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From the Archives
Who Runs Our World?
Netanyahu addresses US Congress
By Richard Hugus | January 4, 2019
Our world is run by oligarchs, the holders of vast wealth from monopolies in banking, resource extraction, manufacturing, and technology. Oligarchs have such power that most of the world doesn’t even know of their influence over our lives. Their overall agenda is global power — a world government, run by them — to be achieved through planned steps of social engineering. The oligarchs remain in the background and have heads of state and entire governments acting in their service. Presidents and prime ministers are their puppets. Bureaucrats and politicians are their factotums.
Who are politicians? Politicians are people who work for the powerful while pretending to represent the people who voted for them. This double-dealing involves a lot of lying, so successful politicians must be good at it. It’s not an easy job to make the insane agenda of the powerful seem reasonable. Politicians can’t reveal this agenda because it almost always goes against the interests of their constituents, so they become adept at sophistry, mystification, and the appearance of authority. For example, wars for Israel have been part of the agenda of the powerful for years. Since 2001, wars for Israel have been sold as “the war on terror” and lots of lies had to be made up as to why the war on terror was a real thing. The visible faces promoting the war on terror were neoconservatives in the US, almost all of whom were advocates for Israel, or Zionists. Zionists are not the only members of the oligarchy, but they seem to be its lead actors. ... continue
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